Author Archives: Andrew

reporting from Beirut on yesterday’s record demonstration opposing the presence of Syrian forces in Lebanon. Her report was also shown on BBC News 24.

BBC News Online also covered the protest. In ‘Record’ protest held in Beirut, they reported:

Nearly one million people gathered for an opposition rally in Beirut, officials say – a month after the death of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The demonstration surpassed recent pro-Syrian rallies and is thought to be the biggest in Lebanese history.

The BBC’s Kim Ghattas in Beirut says the crowds turned the city centre into a sea of red, white and green – the colours of Lebanon’s national flag.

Now, here’s where it gets confusing – towards the end of Plett’s report she says:

With Syria on the move, the demonstrations have shifted focus – to forming the opposition into an organised political force and it’s challenging not only Syria, but a major player in Lebanon, the Islamic resistance movement, Hezbollah. Last week it [Hezbollah] demonstrated in support of Syria with similar numbers and a similar political purpose.

Did you spot the confusing bit? By all (other) accounts (e.g. The Times: “Beirut witnessed its biggest anti-Syrian rally in a month of street protests yesterday“), yesterday’s demonstration in Beirut was far and away the largest in the country’s history, and yet Plett baldly states that “Last week [Hezbollah] demonstrated in support of Syria with similar numbers”. Having played down the size of yesterday’s demonstration (without even touching on the apparently dubious composition of much of last week’s pro-Syria crowd), Plett then said “What’s important here is numbers…” – but not, it seems, if you’re a BBC reporter on a mission – or maybe it was just Babs’ vision being obscured by those tears again.

by Nicholas Vance over at Last Night’s BBC News about a Steven Sackur report on the first anniversary of the Madrid bombings. A taster:

Mr Sackur would do well to avoid making sweeping generalisations about Muslim opposition to terror, just as he would never dream of making sweeping generalisations about Muslim support for terror. Further, absolute statements opposing terrorism are often far less impressive once one understands how terms like “civilian” and “defensive struggle” may be defined in Islamic discourse.

Well worth reading it all.

– BBC News Online reports on the final appearance of Dan Rather as anchor of CBS Evening News, US news anchor Rather signs off, noting that:

…his retirement has been marred by criticism he received over a recent report questioning President George W Bush’s military service record.

And that’s all they say about the circumstances of Blather’s retirement – conveniently omitting to mention a) Rather’s use of plainly forged documents; b) Rather stubbornly sticking by the story, attempting to prop it up for many days (including the infamous “fake but accurate” claims) in the face of mounting evidence before finally bowing, but never quite fully admitting, to the inevitable truth; c) the context of the scandal during the US Presidential Elections; or d) the direct link between the scandal and Rather’s subsequent tarnished retirement.

BBC1’s lamentable Breakfast show didn’t do much better either, with Dermot Inconsequential describing Rather’s retirement as coming:

…after a report which mistakenly questioned President Bush’s military service.

They then showed a ‘package’ that mentioned that Rather’s retirement comes after a report “which mistakenly used forged documents”, but that in itself is an innaccurate glossing over of the truth, suggesting as it does that the whole Rathergate scandal amounted to a mere mistake (‘whoops, silly me!’) – if that’s all it was then it was a rather prolonged and painfully realised mistake.

For the history buffs among us, my estimable colleague Scott Campbell’s lengthy Faking it USA is “a real-time history of the week blogs changed the world (or, at least, tried to get an old hack the sack)”.

I came across an interesting blog by an anonymous magistrate, The Law West of Ealing Broadway. His comments on the BBC’s criminal tellytax prosecutions, A Job We Should Not Be Doing At All, are especially interesting. One of his commenters also links to this rather amusing Charter Renewal error page. While we’re slightly off-topic, those interested in the practical aspects of conscientious objection to the BBC, by means of civil disobedience, can find lots of information at Sunday Times’ journalist Jonathan Miller’s Abolish the TV Licence campaign.

Further to Scott’s comprehensive post below about the Giuliana Sgrena checkpoint shooting (that resulted in the unfortunate death of Italian agent Nicola Calipari), Little Green Footballs has pictures of the car allegedly involved. LGF also links to better copies of the photos here and here too. As you can see, the car doesn’t look like it has been hit with the 300-400 rounds alleged by Sgrena’s editor on BBC News Online.

Pictures of the same car have been shown on BBC News 24 – as part of their daily broadcast of ABC News Tonight with Peter Jennings between 1.30am-2am. It remains to be seen whether the BBC will cover this development under their own banner, either on TV or on BBC News Online.

B-BBC commenters also highlight this link to an interesting (translated) article in the prominent Italian newspaper Corriere Della Serra.

Update: The pictures are also here in Corriere Della Sera and on RAI TG1 news (Realvideo 300Kbps, about 3’20” in), which shows an animated graphic depicting the car being shot at from the right hand side (i.e. the side not shown in the pictures), with Calipari in the rear right seat, next to Sgrena in the rear left seat, with the driver in the front left seat.

Update 2 (9pm): BBC News Online continues to cover the Sgrena shooting story, posting both Italy disputes US hostage account and, as noted by Susan, Transcript: Giuliana Sgrena interview, in which Sgrena quite clearly says “the tanks started to strike against us” and “our car was destroyed”. Strangely, BBC News Online haven’t illustrated the destruction of Sgrena’s car, even though photographs (see links above) have been available since yesterday. I wonder why.

Asked about whether she knew if there was payment of ransom money (see: Italy criticised over alleged ransom to free hostage in today’s Times), Sgrena replies “No, I don’t know”. Oddly, the obvious follow-up, “What do you think about the payment of ransoms to kidnappers?”, goes unasked by our fearless BBC inquisitor in the quest for truth.

Sally Magnusson has been pimping her wares on BBC1 to the UK’s pre-schoolers and the many other children who were off school last week. Britain’s Streets of Vice ran at 9.15am, immediately after the BBC’s lamentable Breakfast programme, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday last week, with programmes entitled: Sex in the City, Smack Alley, Behind Closed Doors and Sex Lives & Videotape.

While the programmes were interesting, Magnusson’s annoying wheedling- whining style notwithstanding, it’s appalling to show such strong adult topics, language and imagery at 9.15 in the morning. We learned first hand from a prostitute and her ‘maid’ how good the money is – the prostitute had earned over £500 from ‘serving’ upwards of twenty-five ‘clients’ (some of whom we saw) that day. We visited ‘Smack Alley’, a named street for buying drugs in Derby. We saw a man injecting heroin into his groin. We met Matty, “one of Britain’s top gay porn stars”. We saw gay porn stars playing Twister. We met the ‘oversized’ 59-year old Dominatrix Francesca, Momma Fran, who “has recently embarked on a new career as a porn idol”. We met the staff and were given a guided tour of the facilities of a Hull brothel. We heard a woman moaning “give it to me”. And on and on.

This was on BBC1 – the first channel that appears on most British television sets – at 9.15am in the morning, over four days, when many pre-schoolers and children missing school due to illness are at home and watching (“Mummy, what does group sex mean?”). Worse, with the bad weather last week, schools across the country were closed, with their children at home when these programmes were shown. In one of the programmes we met Marsha, who “is trying to shield her three-year-old daughter Faye from the realities of living in a red light district”. Would that we could shield all of the nation’s children from the sordid realities of the underworld that the BBC brought into their living rooms last week.

The series was commissioned by Alison Sharman, Controller, Daytime. According to her official BBC biography “her ambitions for Daytime are to continue to bring credit to the whole of the BBC through imaginative and unique programming”. Oh dear. Writing at BBC News Online, Sharman claims that “challenging the perceptions of daytime television has been one of my most important focuses”. In The Independent (where else?) Sharman, writing about Britain’s Streets of Vice, says:

Far from being in any way titillating, these insightful and often painfully sad films take us – via modern lightweight digital video camera technology – not to another familiar chat-show encounter, but directly into the world of the sex industry. The series looks at its workers, the health issues involved, the industry’s connection with drug use and the impact on the police working in the front line.

She goes on:

Regardless of the sensitive and careful manner in which these films have been made, the audience will find them challenging. A series like this is not about ratings, it is about raising public awareness in a responsible and non-exploitative fashion. Given the predominantly market-led broadcasting economy, this is the challenging role that falls, happily, to the BBC and its tradition of excellent factual programming. The BBC remains the market leader throughout the day, with BBC1 daytime reaching an average of 16 million people each week…

Sharman boasts about the huge size of the BBC1 daytime audience, the audience that she took “directly into the world of the sex industry”, yet ignores the many children in that audience, while having the cheek to say that this wouldn’t happen on a ‘market-led’ channel – you bet it wouldn’t – which advertiser or commercially accountable broadcaster would want to be associated with exposing the nation’s youngest children to the sordid details of sex, drugs and porn on the margins of society?

Well Miss Sharman, in spite of what you think, you do have a market. It is us, the BBC’s telly-taxpaying viewers, who are your market – it is us by whom you should be led and to whom you should be accountable. The fact that we are compelled, by the threat of eventual imprisonment, to pay the BBC’s tellytax obviously hasn’t escaped your notice – otherwise you might actually be responsive and responsible to your market, the telly-taxpayers and their families.

This dreadful, dreadful scheduling choice is yet another example of the arrogant, ‘challenging’, BBC in action, doing as it pleases, as it thinks best, subverting the nation’s youngest children, unaccountable as ever to its captive telly-taxpaying customers. Worst of all, Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, has sentenced our nation to another ten years of the BBC’s unaccountable, subversive arrogance. She has missed probably one of the best opportunities most politicians could ever have to make Britain a better, happier and more cohesive society, by making the BBC accountable and responsible to the nation, to the people who pay for it. Another ten years. What a calamity.

To add your voice to the hundreds of decent telly-taxpayers who have already complained to the BBC telephone them on 08700 100 222. Make sure they log your complaint and give you a case or complaint number. You can also use the BBC’s Online Complaints form to log your complaint. BBC Complaints have published a standard fob-off statement about Britain’s Streets of Vice. BBC Newswatch has a similar response. Don’t ignore it. Don’t be fobbed off. Make sure they hear you!

Here’s a full transcript, annotated with my thoughts as it went along:

Darren Jordan, 21’14” into the programme:

The Green Party says it has a real chance of winning its first parliamentary seat at the forthcoming General Election. The Greens have members in the European and Scottish Parliaments, as well as more than sixty local councillors, but they’ve never come close to winning a Westminster constituency. Well, our Political Correspondent, Vicki Young, is at the Party’s spring conference, in Chesterfield, Vicki…

That’s news to me. I wonder which constituency they have in mind?

‘Going Live!’ to Vicki Young:

That’s right Darren, the Greens are feeling very confident. As you say, they’re already represented in councils across the country, in the Scottish Parliament, in the European Parliament and in the London Assembly, but now they feel it’s time to move on, and they really want to have that breakthrough they so desperately need.

Yes Vicki, we heard all that from Darren already, and don’t we all want to have that breakthrough we so desperately need…

Start of Vicki Young’s ‘package’:

The Greens are keen to shake off any impression that they are a one issue party. Of course, debates on climate change still feature heavily at this conference, but there’s more emphasis on the public services, policies for a citizen’s pension and extra community policing. The Party’s predicting its best General Election results ever.

Tell us more Vicki, tell us about the Greens’ firm opposition to Britain joining the Euro! Oh, go on, they’re really not as loopy as everyone thinks – tell us about that!

Clip of Dr. Caroline Lucas, MEP, Green Party:

There is a political party with an intelligent, radical, passionate vision for politics. There is a party that offers a radical and credible alternative to business as usual, and that party, friends, is our party, the Green Party, [snippet inaudible, due to applause]

Yaaaaawn….

Back to Vicki Young, film of construction work:

The Greens say this construction project in Brighton is an example of how they make a difference. The Party has six councillors in the City, they’ve negotiated with developers and the unions to encourage vocational training projects for local people, as well as more energy efficient buildings.

Six Green councillors sitting on a wall council. Fancy that! Brighton & Hove has, er, 54 councillors. Gosh. I wonder if the other councillors were watching football or doing something else when the Greens sorted all that out. Looking on the bright side though, six is double the number of yellow LibDems on the council!

Councillor Keith Taylor, Green Party:

This is living as if we mean to stay, er, not actually throwing buildings up, erm, as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible and, er, in an energy sense, as frivolously as possible.

Rrrright.

More of Vicki Young’s ‘package’:

Back at their conference delegates are confident that Brighton could produce the Party’s first Westminster MP. Their election campaign will focus on environmental issues and the public services, but they believe their opposition to the war in Iraq will be a vote-winner, especially with disillusioned Labour supporters.

At last! Now we know for sure it’s Brighton where they’re so confident. Let’s see, Brighton has two Westminster constituencies – Brighton Kemptown and Brighton Pavilion. Wonder which one’s the Green target. Let’s have a look at the results from last time: Brighton Kemptown – Lab 47.82%, Con 35.26%, LD 10.37%, Green 3.29%. Not that one then. Brighton Pavilion – Lab 48.73%, Con 25.05%, LD 13.13%, Green 9.35%. Well, not as bad as Kemptown, but still not a snowball’s chance in hell, eh Vicki. But I’m sure you knew that already.

Back to ‘Going Live!’ to Vicki Young:

Now, as one Green Party member put it to me today, he said “it’s no longer an off the wall idea that the Greens could have an MP at Westminster”, but they do know that the electoral system, the first past the post system, isn’t that kind to them, they need proportional representation really, if they are to realistically get an MP. And, privately they do admit that, really, this time around, it’s a bit of a long shot.

Yes, indeedy, just as the much missed Spitting Image lampooned the not-so-much-missed David Steel, “Go back to your constituencies and prepare for… a bit of a disappointment”, it’s not likely that Tony Blair (or anyone else at Westminster who isn’t as two-faced and yellow as Charles Kennedy and his cronies) is gonna change the first-past the post system, is it, after the kludge they’ve ended up with in Scotland with a lousy self-perpetuating Lib-Lab Flib-Flab coalition that’s an embarrassment even to Blair. Oh, and Vicki, you might have mentioned that if the Greens have their way with proportional representation then all sorts of kooks, commies, neo-Nazis and LibDems will be strutting around Westminster with them in no time.

Darren Jordan, 23’40” into the programme:

Vicki, thank you.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no objection to fringe parties, all those with a reasonable electoral base, getting a look-in on the BBC’s news coverage from time to time, but could we please avoid the manufacture of stories like “The Greens are gonna get a seat at Westminster” leading ever so anti-climactically to an utterly predictable conclusion where even the Greens admit “Oh no they’re not!”. Straightforward, realistic facts will do fine, thank you.

Earlier in Friday’s One O’Clock News we were treated to an even more ridiculous than usual ‘Going Live!’ two-way interview when we ‘Went Live!’ to “our media correspondent, Torin Douglas” who, yes, you guessed it, “is outside Television Centre now”! I guess the BBC management wouldn’t let Torin inside to tell Darren personally about the BBC’s massive payout to lifelong criminal Brendon Fearon…

You can view it all in glorious Realplayer 256Kbps format if you wish. Just so they don’t feel left out, BBC News Online got in their own me-too “the Greens are gonna make it big at Westminster“ puff-piece too.

Just a day after the BBC’s telly tax was renewed for another ten years, allegedly in exchange for improvements to their public service programming, we learn that the BBC’s idea of public service includes paying career criminal Brendon Fearon £4,000 (£4,500 according to some reports) for a documentary appearance.

Fearon, who has been in and out of jail many, many times, is the burglar who was shot, along with two accomplices, one of whom who was killed, by Norfolk farmer Tony Martin, whilst attempting to rob Mr. Martin in the middle of the night at his remote farm house.

Given Fearon’s long record of criminal activity and his evident difficulty with telling the truth, it is ridiculous for the BBC to argue that they must pay telly-taxpayers hard-earned cash to this parasite on society ‘for the purpose of balance’.

I have no objection to Fearon appearing on the programme to give, and be robustly challenged on, his version of events, but the idea of this scumbag profiting so handsomely out of his criminal activities, especially from public money, is deeply, deeply offensive.

Perhaps now, with the imposition of a new ten-year sentence of BBC bias, it is finally time for an organised campaign of telly tax civil disobedience for those who conscientiously object to funding the unaccountable BBC. As with fox hunting, there will come a point where it’s just not politically practical to enforce the law, and that will be the end of the left-leaning navel-gazing institutionally biased BBC as we know and loathe it – hopefully to be replaced or transformed into a popularly funded British broadcaster that truly reflects and represents our great nation.

Update: According to The Sun, Fearon has thirty-five convictions, stretched over twenty years, which presumably represent the tip of this particular offending iceberg. The BBC told The Sun “It is important the public hears the fullest account of what happened. We believe Mr Fearon will make a contribution” – as of course will the BBC, to Fearon, with over 35 tellytaxes worth of our cash. Sickening.

One final note: Even though this is a major story that broke late last night, it has, strangely enough, already been relegated from News Online’s home page to a couple of quiet slots on the UK and Entertainment pages. Unlike this story, Labour trio’s ‘vote-rig factory’, which didn’t, as far as I am aware, even make it onto the News Online home page. Funny how all those Lib Dem election bribes promises hang around among News Online’s headlines for so long though, isn’t it…

of huge national, nay, international significance – yes, “The BBC keeps the licence fee for another ten years, but the Board of Governors will be scrapped. The Government’s plans for the BBC also include a sharper focus on public service programming and less emphasis on audience ratings”. Strangely enough, Sky News led, rightly, with the story of Shabina Begum, a story of much greater significance than the government’s disappointingly modest tinkering with the running of the BBC (if they’d brought in voluntary subscription to the BBC, that would have been a lead story).

The BBC’s generous coverage of itself included a filmed package by Gavin Hewitt, including this introduction:

But some programme makers doubt whether it will be that easy to define quality, engaging, programming.

to a clip of one Peter Bazalgette of Endemol Productions:

The BBC has Eastenders and Holby City, ITV has Coronation Street and Emmerdale. These are popular dramas, soaps, er, they are the genres of which television is made up of. It’s quite impossible for the BBC to pretend it’s not going to make any of those programmes, and they are going to be, in a sense, related to programmes on other channels because they’re in the same genre.

Well Peter, perhaps the fearless, incisive, Tessa Jowell has some other programmes in mind* – drivel like, say, Fame Academy (which has to be the all time number one example of the BBC copying a nihilistic ratings grabber from its non feather-bedded commercial rivals) or Changing Rooms or Ground Force or Ready Steady Cook. And who makes tosh like that? Why, Endemol Productions of course, not that The Ten O’Clock News saw fit to mention Endemol’s substantial relationship with the BBC.

* not that Eastenders is worthy of preservation in its current form – it and its ilk have a lot to answer for, teaching generations of young Britons that all social interaction takes the form of violent slanging matches in dreadful Estuary English.

Both BBC News 24 and BBC News Online have given substantial coverage this morning to the case of Shabina Begum, an orphaned 16-year old Muslim girl who, apparently under the sway of her older brother, in yet another ‘human rights’ judicial travesty, has won the right to drive a coach and horses through the rights of schools to set and maintain a school uniform policy.

With all the BBC’s coverage of this appeal case, including this News Online article, Muslim gown schoolgirl wins case (timestamped 10.56am and updated at 12.16pm), why is it that one has to turn to The Times, Muslim girl wins battle to wear traditional dress in school, to find that:

Ms Begum was represented at the appeal court by Cherie Booth QC, Tony Blair’s wife.

Why has the BBC seen fit to excise this small but noteworthy and newsworthy detail from their version of the news? Didn’t they notice Cherie Booth’s name? Or have they purposefully decided to ignore the involvement of the Prime Minister’s wife in this case?

Update: Channel 4 news this evening covered this story properly. Samira Ahmed’s report mentioned the involvement of Cherie Booth, the influence of Ms. Begum’s older brother (her effective guardian, since the death of her parents) and his links with the extreme Hizb-ut-Tahrir group (according to the Sunday Times HuT’s ‘ultimate aim is a worldwide Muslim state, ruled by sharia, Islamic law, and it urges Muslims not to participate in democratic politics’). Channel 4 News also mentioned that the headteacher of Denbigh High School is a Muslim too – another interesting aspect that escaped the BBC’s notice (or at least their reporting). Finally, prompted by Susan’s comments on this post, it seems that Ms. Begum’s lawyer, Yvonne Spencer, speaking on Channel 4 news last year, suggested that the real reason the girl objects to wearing the shalwar khameez is that Sikhs and Hindus also wear it.